ASSOCIATED PRESSWriter and director Rebecca Miller attends a special screening of "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee" hosted by The Cinema Society in November.
Telling stories about women striving not to be defined by the men in their lives, Rebecca Miller has forged her own style of empowering, personal filmmaking.

The writer-director, daughter of literary legend Arthur Miller and wife of Oscar-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis, may filter memories into movies, but the pictures aren’t directly autobiographical.

Her latest project, "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee," opening Friday, is adapted from her novel of the same title. The story centers on a party girl-turned-housewife (Robin Wright) seeking a way forward by making peace with her past and the ghosts of her formidable parents.

While Miller acknowledges that Pippa’s seriocomic tale mirrors her own Connecticut upbringing, she stresses that the book and the film are works of fiction.

"It would be a mistake to get me confused with Pippa," says Miller, 47, whose mother was the photographer Inge Morath. "Although I know that world of Connecticut intellectuals, it is not my life. Some of the things I love about Pippa are the things that are most unlike me."

Pippa surrounds herself with writers, painters and musicians, partly because she lacks her own creative outlet. Miller, however, has always been artistic, starting out as a painter and moving into cinema. Rather than going to film school, she took roles as an actress for five years. Appearing in such pictures as "Regarding Henry" and "Consenting Adults," she learned by observing on set.

That experience enabled her to get behind the camera for 2002’s "Personal Velocity," an uncompromising character study about three troubled women in transition.

"I don’t have all the answers," Miller explains. "It’s more that I’m bringing up all sorts of questions and incongruities and things that don’t match because that’s what people really are, these anomalies. There are all these qualities that don’t match within people, and that’s what makes people individuals and makes them very difficult to understand and yet also interesting."

In "Pippa Lee," the protagonist is introduced as an unassuming woman who’s relocated to a retirement community with her older husband (Alan Arkin). Being uprooted leads her to reflect on her youth (Blake Lively plays the young Pippa).

Flashbacks reveal Pippa struggling with her abusive mother (Maria Bello) and finding escape in debauchery on the art scene. Some of that bohemian spirit lingers, as she flirts with a younger man (Keanu Reeves), the depressive son of her neighbor.

The director deadpans, "This is as close as I’ve ever come to a romantic comedy."

Miller first penned "Pippa" as a writing exercise between films. She put it aside when she got the opportunity to make "Personal Velocity."

Her follow-up, "The Ballad of Jack and Rose," starred Day-Lewis as a radical environmentalist who has an unhealthy attachment to his teen daughter. The famously immersive actor doubled as builder on set.

"At one point, Daniel had to climb up this very high windmill, which was quite precarious because it was meant to be a homemade windmill," explains Miller, mother of two sons, Ronan, 11, and Cashel, 7. "It was funny because I had him do it a few times and he came down and said that in normal life, I would be having a heart attack seeing him up there, but as a director, I was like, ‘Can you do that again?’ I had him wobbling around up there."

The film’s critical acclaim enabled Miller to draw a big cast when she adapted "Pippa" for the screen. Performers gravitated toward the project even as studios shied away. It took a year to get funding but the delay was ultimately beneficial, according to Wright.

Over the course of months, the filmmaker and the actress developed a bond, talking "Pippa" on the phone and meeting in New York.

"I got to know her as a woman and as a writer and then as a director," explains Wright, who’s earning Oscar buzz for the portrayal. "We had a year to have an understanding and a code speak that is so rare."

Moore took a supporting part as a lesbian photographer just for the chance to collaborate with Miller, describing her as "someone whose work I’ve admired for so long."

The actress went to see "Jack and Rose" at a downtown Manhattan art house when it opened four years ago. "It’s such a beautiful movie," she says. "I remember e-mailing Rebecca right after I saw it."

Miller doesn’t indulge actors with dozens of takes. They get no more than five chances to perfect a moment. Reeves says, "It’s like jumping off the high board, but you know you’re in good hands with Rebecca."

Reeves is featured in one of the movie’s most provocative scenes. During a romantic encounter with Pippa, he removes his shirt to reveal a giant tattoo of Jesus on his chest. It was a deliberate choice to juxtapose sexuality and religious symbolism.

"It’s meant to make you feel uncomfortable and yet it’s erotic," Miller says.

Now that "Pippa" is making its bow, Miller is sifting through novels to find inspiration for her next movie. She won’t rule out the possibility of adapting one of her father’s plays. (She met Day-Lewis when he starred in the 1996 version of "The Crucible.")

"It could happen," she explains. "So far, the moment hasn’t been right and generally if I feel like someone else could direct the film, I may as well let them do it. If nothing else, at least I will have left behind films that were really my films."